One of the hardest challenges for a writer is presenting an audience with characters they should hate, but providing sufficient intrigue, charm, wit or plot to make them engaging. As part of this there must be a resolution that provides either reason or redemption, to justify the time and money sacrificed by the audience to live through their machinations. Without those add-ons, the incentive to stay is limited. Alas. there are no incentives in A J Evans new play.
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| The Stupor Party |
The Supper Party is a ghastly socialising mix of middle-aged luvvies, broadly based to the naked eye on Harold Pinter (grumpy old playwright), Antonia Fraser (successful, up-market historian), and Joan Bakewell (waspish journalist, once shagged by the grumpy old playwright who then wrote a successful play about it). Joining them for goose tongues (I kid you not) is a camp old thesp who's buggered the journalist's son, a David Starkey style bad-tempered gay historian, a small Irish woman, and a pair of talentless young folk who're apparently being exploited by assorted codgers for being... young. Oh dear.
To add to the obstacle course of characterisation and plot, the cast is directed as if this is a work by Noel Coward. The whole piece is so highly mannered, an automated tableau, that it sticks in the throat like... goose tongues.
In conclusion: The Tabard has had a brilliant run of shows in recent times, but this one fails to hit the markers at every level despite game attempts by the cast to add a second dimension to characters who are struggling with one.
References
Tabard Theatre
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